News

Senate discusses policies

E-Board reviews projects, funding

Field hockey wins again, stands at 8-2 on season

Ed/Op

Staff Editorial
Alcohol policies take back seat for EMPAC opening

Editorial Notebook
Freshmen finish first tests

Editorial Notebook
Cassel is wall that can’t be scaled

Change doesn’t need to end at the ballot box

Panhellenic Council
Sororities serve world

Derby
NSBE and SHPE host Career Fair

Top Hat
AAC hears new ideas

My View
New intramural rules increase xenophobia

Letter to the Editor
EMPAC not quite ‘living room of campus’

Features

Inaugural Concert presents unique sounds

DANCE MOViES premiere showcases international films

Tengstrand inaugurates three EMPAC pianos

Voyage astounds with dance, music

Terra Café pleases palates with fresh, healthy produce

Sports

RPI earns split in first weekend of play

Engineers win fourth straight

Vassar defeats RPI in final home game

RPI, SUNY Cobleskill end match scoreless

Rensselaer in Brief
Capital Campaign met
President Shirley Ann Jackson announced Wednesday that RPI had surpassed the $1.4 billion Renaissance at Rensselaer capital campaign goal. The news came nine months in advance of the campaign’s target end date of June 30, 2009, and two days before the opening of the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center.

“On behalf of the Board of Trustees, the Campaign Co-Chairs, and the entire Rensselaer leadership team, I would like to express my deepest, heartfelt gratitude to all of you in the campus community, who have worked so diligently to help achieve this unprecedented milestone in our Institute’s history,” Jackson said in an e-mail to RPI.

The campaign will still continue until its target end date in June; it aims to build the Institute unrestricted endowment, and also seeks funds for endowed scholarships and fellowships, faculty positions, curriculum support, student life programs, and athletics programs and facilities.

NSF grant received
A new research center at RPI, funded by a five-year, $18.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, aims to supplant the common light bulb with next-generation lighting devices.

The Engineering Research Center for Smart Lighting will be the only NSF engineering research center based in New York state. The Smart Lighting Center will investigate and develop light-emitting diode technologies that could one day change the way people illuminate the world. Along with significant energy savings for lighting homes and offices, these technologies will open doors to a diverse spectrum of new applications, impacting everything from biotechnology and transportation to computer networking and displays.

The project is expected to receive up to $50 million in funding over the next 10 years. The bulk of this funding will come from the NSF, with additional support from New York state, RPI, and 18 industrial partners. NSF funding began in September with $3.25 million for the center’s first year, a figure forecast to increase over the next several years. New York has committed $700,000 to the center’s first year, and first-year funding from industrial partners is expected to approach nearly $1 million. Rensselaer is committing more than $500,000 to help launch the center.

At the heart of smart lighting are powerful techniques to control basic properties of light. With recent breakthroughs in the first anti-reflective coating, nano-emitter growth, in the control of the refractive index of materials, and in the demonstration of the first viable polarized LED-based light sources, researchers are now better able to control most aspects of lighting.

By allowing humans to better support their natural Circadian rhythm, smart lighting holds the promise for reducing individuals’ dependency on sleep-inducing drugs, and even reducing the risk of certain types of cancer.